And to think, making this photograph will not even be possible in a year's time because the location I shot this from, the roof of The Pier, will be demolished. I certainly hope the structure that replaces it will offer similar or better views of the downtown St. Petersburg, Floridawaterfront, otherwise there will be no more photos showing its beauty at dusk, twilight and sunset.

Cotton candy coated downtown St. Petersburg vivid pink dusk - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 6 sec tripod mounted with cable releaseI had the opportunity to make these photos only because I was teaching a DSLR Photography Lesson focusing on tripod usage. Otherwise, I would have been home and never witnessed this amazing view. In fact, both my student and I had just earlier remarked how gray the sky was and how we would not be able to get any keepers this lesson, but at least I was able to teach him the technical aspects of using a tripod for long exposure photography. I told him since there is so little color that I would shoot thinking to convert the images to black & white!

Orange dusk breaks over downtown St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 1/2 sec tripod mounted with cable releaseThen all of a sudden a hint of orange light appeared reflected off the low clouds, as the sun had already actually set. We took immediate notice and thought, at least we got to see a touch of color. Then as the sun slipped further to the other side of the Earth, the dusk sky started to explode in color and as we adjusted the length of the shutter speed on our DSLRs, we were able to pull more and more color back over the horizon and into our lenses. The photographs above are actually posted in reverse chronological order, with the above orange image the first I took. Each was made almost exactly five minutes after the other. That is the power of putting your DSLR on a tripod and using shutter speed to create an amazing long exposure image finding light and color the naked eye cannot see.